


Take Manhattan

by Fictionwriter



Series: Night Magic [3]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: lewis_challenge, International Fanworks Day 2015, M/M, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 00:07:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3337328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fictionwriter/pseuds/Fictionwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had been told he was James Hathaway, but little else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Manhattan

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lewis roulette - Red 12: First We Take Manhattan by Leonard Cohen
> 
> Many thanks to Moth2fic for her speedy and efficient beta

There was sleet on the window; fine crystals pockmarking the glass, blurring the outside so the only truly visible feature was the haloed amber light from the lamppost across the street. James stared for a while, watching the small runnels of melt chase down the window, but there was nothing there in the dark night that would give him the answers he craved, tell him who he was, where he fitted in this life, so he turned his attention back to the room behind him.

The flat was familiar, and so it should be, it was his after all … apparently. But it was a distant familiarity, one that nagged at the back of his mind, told him he should know that brightly coloured lamp on the side table and its origins, where the cutlery was kept, who the neighbours were, but didn’t mean he did. Other knowledge was there too in hazy half-formed metaphors that floated in and out of his consciousness. Sometimes he pinned one down and it made exquisite sense, a perfectly logical moment of pure knowledge. But more often than not the thoughts floated way; strings of gossamer, too thin and fragile to hold onto.

Retrograde amnesia the doctors had called it. It will pass, they said.

So here he was, stuck in a world of vague remembrances, knowing his name because he had been told he was James Hathaway, but little else, contemplating a past and future he had no hold on.

James suppressed a shudder and moved away from the cold darkness of the window. The heating hadn’t been on long and there was a chill in the air that Lewis - his friend, his boss, his … something, another vague memory that hovered but refused to stabilise … had been angry about when he barged in, uninvited and barely knocking, a little while ago. James couldn’t remember giving the man a key. But that wasn’t unusual in the current circumstances; merely an irritating fact of life.

Ignoring the sounds that were coming from the kitchen – Lewis busy with kettle and cups, making tea ‘because it’s bloody cold in here and you need something to warm you up until that heating kicks in’, no doubt adding a sandwich or two while he was about it, a panacea for what he couldn’t cure – Hathaway settled into one of the comfortable armchairs he couldn’t remember buying and rested back his head. He closed his eyes, the clink of crockery and noise of the kettle somehow soothing.

There were things he dreamed that frightened him and were frighteningly familiar, so much so that he had begun to dread falling asleep. Dreams that took on fantastical shapes, none of them pleasing, always ending with a searing light that ripped through his brain, tearing him to a terrified wakefulness and left him to lie gasping and sweating, afterimages of blood, teeth and worse burnt into his retinas. They made him wonder if he were going mad, until daylight brought an element of truth he couldn’t deny to the dreams.

But they also confused and frustrated him. What was the truth? What was imagination? Lewis gave out information when asked specific questions, but Hathaway didn’t know what questions to ask, how to explain the imaginings of his mind so that he didn’t sound insane. That he felt Lewis, Innocent and the other colleagues who knew him but he had lost in a fugue of forgetfulness were walking on eggshells around him, careful not to push too hard but at the same time hiding things he felt he should know, didn’t help. He hadn’t yet decided whether to be annoyed about that or just amused, their care somehow frustrating while being strangely touching. 

Time passed and Hathaway dozed, hovering in a state of half-awake-half-asleep. The radio was on in the kitchen and he could hear Lewis singing along with it, his voice a soft baritone and not unpleasant. His drowsing consciousness recognised the song as a Cohen tune, then immediately wondered where that knowledge came from. There was an associated with this room somehow; another quiet evening with soft music playing and a vague familiar comfort. He pushed at it, wanting to pursue the thread to the end. There was something tantalising, there but just out of reach … an argument? No, a discussion.

_‘But what’s it mean? First we’ll take Manhattan then we take Berlin. Always sounded like a call to terrorism to me.”_

_“Not terrorism so much as extremism in thought, or an examination of the mind of the extremist and the need to use extreme measures to change society for the better.”_

_“Revolution in song? Like Dylan with his protests?”_

_“Yeah, musicians have been the voice of revolutionary movement for centuries.”_

_“Or maybe he’s just singing about his life as a musician. Took him a while to get going didn’t it, Leonard Cohen? Make a name for himself? Maybe he’d finally got to the point of taking Manhattan then Berlin with his music.”_

_“Nah, ‘_ _They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, For trying to change the system from within, I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them, First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.’ What’s that if not a call to revolution?”_

_“The trouble with you, lad, is you let existential thinking get the better of you. Read somewhere once that even Cohen didn’t know what it meant. Maybe we’re just meant to enjoy it.”_

Hathaway huffed out a laugh at that, at the way Lewis always seemed to be set on saving James from his own introspective self. He relaxed, letting this first truly tangible memory flow over and around him; the rare quiet evening, wine on the coffee table, music in the background and a decidedly tipsy flavour to the conversation. The thing with Lewis was, conversations with him were eclectic and never dull.

He waited as more truths unfolded, a small flow that threatened to turn into a flood. Meanings within meanings as feelings and memories, certainties, dropped back into place; the horrors contained in their lives, their way of living and the things they did. It all shocked him to stillness for a moment, until a noise from the doorway broke into his thoughts and scattered them like ripples from a stone dropped into still water.

“You okay, James?” Lewis’ look of concern was as familiar as the sun rising in the morning.

_I know this man._ “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. It was easy to smile, to let the warmth of the room join the warmth of companionship he’d just rediscovered fill him. It didn’t seem to matter if the interruption had chased away his revelations, the welcome and the not so welcome. They would come back now they had started, he wouldn’t lose them again.

Lewis smiled back and advanced, tray with steaming cups of tea and a plate full of sandwiches in hand.

“That’s all right then,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

 


End file.
